1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to thermal treatment of tissue, and in particular to postoperative thermal treatment of the facial area.
2. Background
The benefits of thermal treatment to injured or damaged tissue or to relieve postoperative pain and swelling are well known. In fact, there exists a multitude of devices designed to apply thermal treatment to various parts of the human body for various differing aliments. Some prior art thermal treatment devices include a variety of ice bags permanently stitched to a face harness or mask. These thermal treatment devices require removal of the face harness when the temperature of the ice bag rises.
In an attempt to make ice bags easier to exchange, some thermal treatment devices include a limited number of hook-and-loop fasteners, such as Velcro. Corresponding fasteners are attached to the ice bags such that the ice bags can be easily attached and detached from the limited number of hook-and-loop fasteners. However, these thermal treatment devices are also unsatisfactory and are characterized as being very intrusive, either blocking thermal treatment, and/or limiting thermal treatment to the area having the hook-and-loop fasteners.
Another approach has been to use thermal treatment devices having sectioned harnesses. For example, these thermal treatment devices may be divided into a neck section, a chin section, a facial section, and a head section. Each section typically attaches to the next and each section is individually frozen. Sectioned thermal treatment devices are characterized as being poorly configurable to the contours of the face for at least two reasons. First, as mentioned, each entire section is frozen, making that section very difficult to adjust to a given face. Second, partial coverage in a given section is usually not possible. For example, if the thermal treatment device has a removable facial section, treatment of only one side of the face is not possible. Either the removable facial section is attached, thereby treating the entire face, or the removable facial section is detached, thereby treating none of the face.